CHAPTER 1: Gibran

WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN

By Gibran Haque

WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN
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Power Plant


  • The Human Civilization and the climate are slowly colliding and causing problems together.

  • We humans are putting six different pollutants into the air, once emitted these gases travel up the sky quickly and they eventually come down some faster than others.

  • Another 50 to 100 years before our ozone layer is healed completely from the damage

Differences between Global Warming and Ozone Layer

  • Global warming is an increase in surface temperatures. The hole in the ozone layer is a natural phenomenon, for the pole that is experiencing winter. Ozone decays naturally with time, and due to forcing’s by various contaminants. The pole that is experiencing winter receives no UV-C from the Sun; no new ozone is formed, so the poles only receive ozone by diffusion from adjacent areas. The concern is not the "ozone hole" per se, but the documented increase in the size of the ozone hole.

Sources of Global Warming

  • CO2 is by far the biggest factor (43%) in global warming, since the beginning of the industrial revolution the burning of fossil fuels has gone up by 40 percent.

  • These are all caused by manufacturing, electricity and heat or transportation.

  • Even though there more amounts of CO2 than methane it is still very dangerous because it is 20 times more potent that CO2 in its ability to trap heat which makes it just as much deadly as CO2.

  • 38% of C02 emissions are coming from electricity and heat

  • Other major contributors for C02 include transportation, manufacturing and deforestation.

  • Second to CO2 is methane (27%)

  • Most of methane comes from fermentation, oil and gas and landfills.

  • Other pollutants include Black Carbon,(12%), Halocarbons (8%), Carbon Monoxide (7%) and Nitrous Oxide (4%)

Carbon Dioxide

  • Primarily comes from burning of coal for heat and electricity, from the burning of oil based products

  • Largest Amount of air pollution

  • After fossil fuels the next largest source of man based CO2 pollution comes from land use changes, deforestation.

  • If we stopped producing C02, half of the man made C02 would fall out of the atmosphere.

  • We are putting in 90 million tons of C02 everyday

Methane

  • Second because cause of Global Warming

  • Even though there is less, it is 20 times as potent as CO2

  • More than half of methane comes from agriculture

  • Other comes from oil and gas

  • The natural gas that heats houses is methane

  • Melting of permafrost in Arctic Ocean is releasing lot of methane

Black Carbon

  • Third largest cause is black carbon or soot

  • Unlike others, it is not a gas

  • Made of tiny carbon particles

  • It absorbs heat from incoming sunlight

  • Largest source of soot is burning of biomass (Brazil, Indonesia, Central Africa)

  • Also produced by forest fires in North America, Australia, South Africa and elsewhere.

  • 20% of black carbon comes from the burning of wood, cow dung, and crop residues in South Asia and China.

  • It affects India and China greatly due to the unusual seasonal weather pattern

  • The temperature inversion during monsoon traps black carbon over the glaciers causing air pollution in the Himalaya’s and Tibetan Plateau

  • 75% of the Himalayas could disappear in 10 years due to accelerated heating

  • Since 50% of drinking water comes from Himalayas, this could pose a great threat.

  • 30% of Black Carbon comes from burning of Fossil Fuels

  • Albedo is the measure of the reflectivity of different objects and surfaces on the earth

  • The lower the number, the more energy is absorbed, contributing to global warming

  • Most reflective objects are ice and snow, which send 90% of the sunlight back.

  • In areas that experience long dry seasons with no rainfall, lack carbon concentration build up to extraordinarily high levels

Halocarbons

  • Forth most significant cause of global warming
  • Halocarbons are best known as destroyers of ozone,
  • Three halocarbons, CFC-11, CFC-12 and CFC-113, stand out as having the greatest potential as greenhouse gases
  • It is regulated and reduced under the Montreal Protocol which was a Treaty from 1987 due to the hole in the ozone layer

Great Smog

  • Occurred in December 1952 in London

  • A lethal smog descended immersing the city in a thick blanket of air pollution for 5 dark days

  • 4,000 people died that week and 8,000 in the following months from respiratory infections

  • Result of Increased coal burning and temperature inversion

  • After this government took and oath to improve air quality

  • In 1956, the British parliament introduced the Clean Air Act, outlawing the burning of coal in open hearth fires,

  • After that an environmental change took place in USA and surrounding countries.

Carbon Monoxide, VOC’s, and Nitrous Oxide

  • CM mostly produced by cars in USA

  • These pollutants interact with other chemicals in the air to increase air pollution

  • Nitrous Oxide comes from agricultural practices that rely heavily on nitrogen fertilizer, greatly magnifying the natural emissions resulting from the bacterial breakdown of nitrogen

  • After development of ammonia, the amount of nitrogen in the environment doubled

  • Modern farming depends more on synthetic ammonia fertilizers, which add nitrogen to oil.

Verdict

We are exposing the world to various pollutants that are affecting the lives of everyone. We as humans need to do something about it before it explodes into something big. And Finally…… remember………. WHAT GOES UP MUST COME DOWN!!